(03-06-2012 05:20 PM)Stevil Wrote: But you stated that morality is an absolute right and an absolute wrong. I would agree with this definition of morality.
So we aren't differing on semantics. We semantically agree with regards to the term "morality".

But a group of people banding together and agreeing on rules does not define absolute right and absolute wrong. This ruleset is not morality. It is a set of human defined mutually agreed upon rules. Most societies have different rules, especially societies based on different cultures and religions. These rules differ, they are not aligned with any absolutes.

If you think morality exists and is absolute, then the elephant in the room is whom or what defined these rights and wrongs and how do people know of these rights and wrongs. Why is it that no-one can agree?

Why is it that an animal, say a chimpanzee, can kill another chimpanzee and we call it natural monkey behaviour, but if a human does it we call it murder?

Some Christians do this in debate. They tell us atheists that atheism is a belief, that it is a religion. It seems to me that believers whom debate, want their opponents to also be believers.

Wants aside. I am not a believer in morality. There are no absolute rights or wrongs. My stance as an amoralist is a philosophical stance. It is the philosophy of lack of belief in morality. People make rules to benefit themselves, not to align with some cosmically defined right and wrong.

I would be keen to know where you think absolute right and wrong comes from, and what the repercussions of not following this would be? In another post you talked about Kant and impacts on society.
Well I agree that our actions have impacts on society. e.g. if we go around killing people then society becomes unsafe. This isn't a cosmic justice, it is natural law. People want to survive, if there are threats e.g. murderers then people will act to remove those threats.
People aren't at all concerned with whether people are acting immorally or not. People are concerned for their own safety.
Sometimes by coincidence these things overlap. But people react due to the survival aspect not the moral aspect.

This is your belief, not mine. I try not to judge. I don't believe in morality. Is it immoral for people to have gay sex? I would say no, because nothing is immoral. But lets say morality does exist. My answer would be, I don't care if gay sex is immoral or if people are immorally having gay sex. It does not impact my survival, so I don't care. Be as immoral as you like, as long as it doesn't threaten my survival, then I simply don't care.

If we were truly rational then we wouldn't believe in absolute right and wrong. We wouldn't have moral beliefs.

I think it is OK to kill people in certain circumstances. I am OK for the death penalty, I would prefer the death penalty over letting a repeat rapist/murder back into society or over paying to keep them alive in prison.
I think abortion is OK, for whatever reason the mother chooses.
I think euthanasia is OK,
I think self defense is OK.

Why? Not a moral stance but purely for survival. A pregnant woman having an abortion does not threaten my life, a sick and dying person having euthanasia doesn't threaten my life, a rapist/murderer does threaten my life, killing a rapist/murderer does not threaten my life.

I've already explained all of your points in this thread.

For one, yes, if you had your "band group" together and formed your social contract theory, you would be making a right and wrong. You could still claim, like moral relativism, that there wasn't an objective basis and absolute truth, like you did in your argument, but that's still morality; you'd just claim that other "band group/tribes" would have a different set of moral rules, which would be subjectively true, for them, but might differ from yours, and that they would agree upon for their survival, like your group does. But really, I'd go a step further to say you'd be the one more akin to playing God here, and that you would in fact be applying you set of rules (i.e. your morality) universally. You say that you'd do whatever for survival? If someone were to break your rules, what would happen? They wouldn't be subject to protection from your rules only repercussions that might come from you willing them out of the contract or them interfering with your contract and you protecting your survival. Besides being brutally primitive, it's completely discussing, egotistical absurdity. You'd be fusing social contract theory, egoism, and relativism for probably the worst, and most primitive, form of morality that a rational mind could come up with.

I will concede, however; the above is just a hole I feel you are making bigger by means of digging a deeper hole to get out of it, instead of just climbing up the ladder I'm lending down to you. You are still doing moral philosophy, but yes, I will accept that you are coming to the conclusion that morality does not exist, as you claim, if you accept the following: You can't claim right or wrong; your set of rules are not technically rules but just preferences. They are preferences and only preferences, they are not opinions, or fact based in any way. You also have to accept that no one person in the group owes anyone else in the group anything nor do you have a right to claim rights from them or have any type of basis for disagreement with anyone who opposes your preferences, apart from just either them killing you or you killing them. You just have to make sure you use the proper terms. You don't have any rights by these preferences.

I think that is what you are accepting, I just want to make sure you know that there is no basis for disagreement with others who think that killing is the right thing to do, apart from killing them to ensure your own survival. It seemed like earlier you did not want to say it was equal to someone not liking broccoli and you liking it or them liking blue and you liking red, because you life aside, that is exactly what it is. If someone were to kill someone from your group or were to rape, assault, abuse, torture, lie, or do anything else along those lines to you, you have absolutely no basis from which to say, that was wrong, without conceding to the hole I think you are in. You can claim survival all you want, but you can't build constructs of what should and shouldn't be done without morality existing, because your preferences don't have any ground to stand on otherwise. Survival alone only requires ensuring survival and you can't claim rights from others behavior i.e. you can't have a construct of rules, only an instinctive and innate, you don't kill me, I won't kill you, deal based on innate mutual preferences.

I'll now first explain where human morality comes from, and then state why I think there is an objective bases, and moral relativism is absurdity. That should take care of your other concerns.

The thing that distinguishes us from ALL other animals, as far as we know, is rationality, system 2 thinking. When you talk survival, and why it is so offensive and degrading to me, is that you are basically degrading our thinking to the likes of animals. Animals are built for survival by evolution. If they didn't instinctively, out of their own nature, protect themselves first and then their families, bands, and species as necessary, like I pointed out before, they wouldn't be here.

When I said, survival doesn't require rationalization, I was referring to how we are not other animals. Animals, don't sit around and think about how they are going to survive or how they are going to protect their own livelihood, they just do it out of instinct. If something threatens them, they sense it and react. They should be able to, I'm not an expert, categorize threats by recognizing patterns in their surroundings and warn their young about threats, this way they can build on reactive instinct and recognize threats more quickly and react accordingly. They do not, however, rationalize about it: they don't think, they can't think, about whether or not they should kill each other or other species. Neither do they think about how to ensure their survival within their species by forming band groups and defining rule sets to follow. They might form bands, but they do so instinctively and naturally protect each other, not rationally.

Morality comes from philosophy, it comes from rationality. It's even further degrading to me, and human beings as a species, to say that we are not rational enough to come up with conclusions on how we should and/or should not be treating each other (i.e. morality doesn't exist); and/or it is even further degrading to your own rationality to claim that it can't be known, at least most of, what should and should not be done within a society, especially as it pertains to each other, and it might be slightly less degrading, though still up there, to say that these are not universal truths.

No power higher than rationality is needed to define universal truth. Morality is derived from the human rationality, not our external perceived reality. Physics has law, like you pointed out; we, however, can't know physical law, and we can't know it to be absolute or universal: it only appears to use to have a set absolute law, but we can't make a logical claim that reality even exists, and we definitely can't say it is fixed and/or we know it. Metaphysics has the only absolutes, because they are defined by rationality and human philosophy i.e. the human mind. I've already likened morality to math, if it were to exists, I care less if you disagree that it does, it is the exact same type of metaphysical construct as math. Does math not have universal or absolute truth? Then so can morality; you don't have to agree.

Why does universal truth have to exist?

First I have to point out that moral relativism is a completely absurd, illogical, cake-eater theory and, it's exactly akin to what you proposed, or I proposed as a hole, as a moral theory in this thread. It's people who are, in fact, willing their own "subjective" truths universally, but to make it seem as if they are not, they deny "objective" truth, like there is a difference in types of truth, contradicting themselves, to make themselves feel better about only wanting morality applied to themselves, the way they want it, while acting like they actually give a rats ass about other human's beliefs and/or rights.

Morality has to be universal, because anytime you make a truth based claim, you have to be referring to truth, unless you are mistaking a preference with an opinion or a truth with something that has no truth; and for there to be truth, it has to be universal and absolute. In all valid moral theory, there is a claim to complete truth or complete lack of truth. If you do x, it is moral, if not it is immoral or vice versa. They may have a theory that allows specific actions to be both right or wrong, but that is only the result of a separate end goal which they have, in general, defined as basis for right and wrong i.e. universal right and wrong comes from the applied end not the action itself.

If you say, I prefer not to be killed by others, that's okay, but nobody owes you that. If you think you have some sort of right, and set up laws, for the way others should be treated or treat each other, that's morality and has truth. If you say, I have the right not to be killed, usually disguised as murder is wrong, it is a claim to morality and objective truth. You can't then say, like relativists, that morality doesn't have an objective truth, because that would change it into just I prefer not to be murdered, and give you no rights morally. All truths, be it ideas or perceptions, are subject to the mind. There is only objective truth and preferences. Objective truth is what we try to seek as knowledge, subjectively though our minds, regardless of whether or not the truth is actually obtainable or not, and preferences are just likes and favorites. Morality is either a truth or on the same level as I like chocolate or my favorite musical genre is classical. Don't use your first grade education fact vs opinions, that doesn't work here. An opinion would just refer to a fact based claim that was not fully known or knowable e.g. it is my opinion that God doesn't exists; God either exists or doesn't i.e. there is a truth, we just can't or don't know.

Call me late to dinner if you will; but I see it more as an insult to your own intellectual capacity and more as just being ignorantly dismissive of my rationality to say that morality, as I see it, does not exist. I do not believe that morality inherently exists or that beings inherently have value, in the same way that I don't believe that language exists or math: these are all constructs dependent upon a rational (<key word) mind, rather it be the human mind, a god, god(s), or something similar, these ideas are, in fact, products of a rational mind. If a rational mind was not present to have, and interpret, sense-data of a perceived reality, what would be math or language?

Metaphysics exists exclusively by the means of reason, specifically the human mind, in this case, and to the end of understanding our perceptions. One of my perceptions are other humans who I tend to see as loving, caring, empathetic, seemingly rational, beings and similar in likeness to how I perceive myself in body. To gain knowledge and further understanding on how these beings are to be treated, based off of my understanding of interactions between ourselves, I feel that morality is a necessary and practical construct to measure behavior and define value to these beings, in the same way that math measures physics and language defines perception.

I don't see it as anything but rational to say that those who murder are immoral, or nothing but an insult to rationality to say that murder is not wrong. Is murder ought not to be done under any circumstance, or toward any end goal? No, though it is still immoral in my view; others may disagree. Are there times when, though immoral, murder is justifiably right? Yes, in my view murder can be justified. Do I accept morality as existent in any other way except as a construct of rationality? No, without rationality, morality does not exist.

To me the problems of morality really are not that hard. Even though, just like in math, problems can get harder and harder to solve, I feel that morality has a universal and absolute answer to every question, regardless of human understanding. Though I think human reasoning is perfectly capable of deciding right from wrong fairly easily, in almost all cases.

You can say morality does not inherently exist, and I guess I have to agree with you to an extent. But as far as me being a rational being and wanting to achieve understanding and knowledge, morality exists necessarily in the same way math and language exits. And to say it is not practical, I would have to again point out law. You can think as you wish, but though they are two completely different things, laws are derived from morality. If you don't contemplate right from wrong you have no basis off which to say anything should be a law. You have no basis to will a preference on anyone; however, you can live in a world where you can kill those who don't want to be subject to your preferences.

I just realized how long and impractical that was, LMAO.

The Paradox Of Fools And Wise Men:
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser men so full of doubts.” ― Bertrand Russell

Oh my. That was the biggest strawman I have ever seen. The problem I find, in discussion with you is that when assessing my position you don't ask any questions. It seems that you think you know everything already, you jump to massive conclusions based on preconceived ideas and end up arguing against a flawed strawman which you so easily destroy with your own arguments. If my position were of that strawman I would have been defeated in debate many times over by you. Well done!

Lets get definitions straight.
Morality - a list of wrongs and rights with regards to actions (possibly thoughts)

Wrongs and rights must be universal, otherwise we could not make bold public claims that an action is immoral. Thus subjective morality is is an oxymoron, it is not morality at all. It is merely people expressing a person opinion with regards to their own personal values and then making a leap and applying it universally, even though they recognise that it doesn't apply universally because they tell you that morality is subjective. So even though subjective morality is logically inconsistent, many people still believe in it.

Creating a set of rules, does not magically create morality. In the USA it is not immoral for gay people to marry. In Saudi Arabia it is not immoral for women to drive cars. In Sharia court it is not immoral to be raped and not marry your rapist.

Morality is not defined by laws and rules. The law is the law, rules are rules, these are not morality. Even today, most people don't consider the law to be morality, the church goers consider their religious beliefs to be morality such that the law provides rules of society but church provides knowledge of morality. Distinct and different.

In a world without morality, and lets face it, I don't believe that morality exists on Earth.
So in this world (Earth) how do we settle disputes with regards to morality? We don't, morality doesn't exist.
How do we settle disputes with regards to the law governing our society? We vote for parties that represent the rules that we want, we protest, we discuss with our local government representative. I know this is contradictory to what you stated in your strawman, but I don't come from the position of your strawman. I come from the position that the world today is already behaving in the way that it would if morality doesn't exist, because I don't have a belief that morality exists.

Some people think morality exists, they believe it, and based on their beliefs they try to make it illegal for people to commit immoral acts.

I think when we implore rationality we can see that morality doesn't exist and thus remove the concept. We can come up with pretty decent laws without it.

(04-06-2012 11:47 AM)Stevil Wrote: Oh my. That was the biggest strawman I have ever seen. The problem I find, in discussion with you is that when assessing my position you don't ask any questions. It seems that you think you know everything already, you jump to massive conclusions based on preconceived ideas and end up arguing against a flawed strawman which you so easily destroy with your own arguments. If my position were of that strawman I would have been defeated in debate many times over by you. Well done!

If you would have read all that I've written, you would have seen that I clearly stated that I wasn't forming a "strawman" and that I would have conceded, not to the validity of your claim, but to a form of the argument you were trying to make.

I understand why you don't believe in morality, and I agree with your position to a certain point. Your intellectual capacity, or lack there of, can't be put on me for taking time to explain concepts that you don't even seem to understand or care about. Even when I'm agreeing with you, and I'm just explaining things, you are arguing back like I was talking about your mother. I was just respectfully disagreeing, and only to a certain extent.

Why everyone throws out the term "strawman" whenever their arguments are weak as shit is beyond me, but it's even more of a crock of shit when a person does it when you aren't even really arguing against them.

Also, you can't show up and make a claim that you can't support, and you can't continually make statements that are seemly contradictory without properly addressing them when questioned.

I've never once jumped to a conclusion about what you were claiming, without questioning it, other than when I came to the conclusion that you were claiming that morality doesn't exist.

Most of my posts, including my last one, for the most part, were me answering your questions, and arguing my position. I did form arguments against you, but only as questions to your point of view, for the most part, and not arguments defeating your point of view; although on some issues, I did that too. You're claiming that I am "assessing [your] position (I) don't ask any questions" and that is complete bullshit. I asked many questions, and your inability to see a question mark, or maybe my lack of grammar skills by posing questions as statements or using a period instead of a question mark, coupled with your lack of comprehension skills, doesn't lead to a lack of questions or questioning.

I wasn't even arguing with you in the entire last post. I was just explaining what you asked for me to explain, and what the implications are for you saying that morality doesn't exist. Things you logically have to accept if you don't believe in morality.

Your lack of understanding can't be blamed on me, especially without asking me to clear up any points you couldn't understand. You are the one who seems to be making the assertions and claims about what I'm arguing, or even arguing against.

Quote:Creating a set of rules, does not magically create morality. In the USA it is not immoral for gay people to marry. In Saudi Arabia it is not immoral for women to drive cars. In Sharia court it is not immoral to be raped and not marry your rapist.

That made absolutely no sense and was irrelevant to anything I said. If that is your response to my position, than my arguments went completely over your head.

Quote: Morality is not defined by laws and rules. The law is the law, rules are rules, these are not morality. Even today, most people don't consider the law to be morality, the church goers consider their religious beliefs to be morality such that the law provides rules of society but church provides knowledge of morality. Distinct and different.

I think when we implore rationality we can see that morality doesn't exist and thus remove the concept. We can come up with pretty decent laws without it.

I've already addressed that, so it was irrelevant too. If you respond you actually have to make good arguments and points, you can't just say that something is because you want it to be that way. I've made arguments against that point of view many times in this thread, and you just posted back the same meaningless crap.

I'm not saying you can't be right or that you don't have a point, but I'm not just going to accept your argument to be true without you first explaining why. If you have a point to make, you actually have to make it, I'm not just going to accept anything you say is true. I'm more open-minded that you probably think, but I'm not gullible.

One of many of my quotes addressing that: "And to say it is not practical (referring to morality), I would have to again point out law (< that's something I gave an argument for in other posts). You can think as you wish, but though they are two completely different things, laws are derived from morality. If you don't contemplate right from wrong, you have no basis off which to say anything should be a law."

This is my last post in response to anything you got to say. If you want to throw human reason out the window you can. You can throw philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, morality, logic, math, language, and and the rest of it out of the window with it. I don't care.

If you don't believe in morality, that's okay. Like I said before, to an extent, I agree. My second or third favorite philosophers and/or school of philosophers and philosophy have a similar view point to you. I disagree with them on a lot of things, but it's not that awful of a point of view intellectually.

Anyone, however, who thinks that murder, rape, dishonesty, cheating, stealing, torture, assault, genital mutilation, slavery, terrorism, genocide, etc., etc. and the like, can't under any construct within the capacity of human reason be known to be morally wrong, and want to liken it to a preference such as a favorite food, drink, or style of music, that's okay with me, but I'm done arguing about it, that's for sure.

You can go on with you life, and next time you or your family are subject to any of the above named atrocities, I send my regards, but remember, you don't think anything is wrong with it.

The Paradox Of Fools And Wise Men:
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser men so full of doubts.” ― Bertrand Russell

It is frustrating to me to have a discussion with you. You don't listen, you don't take the time to understand my position.

Your arrogance is astounding:
Case in point
1. You start off in discussion arrogantly telling me telling me that I am wrong and immediately launch into a strawman
"You're missing the point. Morality isn't the cause of religion; religion is the cause of immorality."

At no point did I state that morality was the cause of religion.

2. You then show a huge ignorance of what amorality is. Making a strawman yet again that amoralists don't have the philosophical grounds to desire rules.
"Without morality, how can you have a problem with the choices religious
people make? If it is neither right nor wrong, you shouldn't have a
problem with religion "judging and controlling, oppressing and killing"
people. At least, it should be a problem on the same scale as someone
liking a different color than you or preferring to eat different food."

This is flawed. You don't need morality as a basis for wanting rules.

3. Your second post to me you again arrogantly tell me I am wrong. And insisting on fighting your strawman, which I told you was not my position
"You're still missing the point then. Have you ever heard of the Euthyphro dilemma? Religion isn't morality."

Again, at no point did I state that morality was the cause of religion neither have I stated that religion is morality.

4. Then some arrogant rant coming at me.
"I really can't go into detail explaining it all to you, I have better
things to do, but you're way off. Go back to the drawing board."

5. Yet more arrogance. Maybe you are suggestin I should stop thinking and simply take what you say as gospel because you are the authority on morality?
"I know morality like I know math and language/description."

6. I'm getting tired here, but yet more arrogance, this filth litterily drips off your posts, and you have already defeated my position without even knowing my position, because of course you have built yourself a nice little strawman to knock down.
"I knew (no I can't actually see the future) that was how you were going
to respond; I was going to defeat that view prior to you responding, but
I didn't feel like it, still don't."

7. So here we go, a strawman showing a very shallow understanding of human behaviour.
"If it's survival, kill them. If you can't kill them, because of law and
fear of justice, law also helps protect you, so your survival isn't an
issue."

Without laws my survival is at issue. I am not top of the heap, I don't want to be murdered, I want a society to discourage murder.

8. More strawman, backed up with a nice dose of snarky sarcasm.
"Also, human beings don't have a survival problem, so you can just kill yourself or let them kill you; we don't really need you."

My stance isn't about the survival of the human race. It is about my survival, my children's survival. I want laws to protect me and my children, is this hard for you to understand? Survival of myself rather than worrying about morality.

9. More strawman, more arrogance, more sarcasm.
"If you want to degrade yourself to an animal, react; kill them off, if
they threaten your survival. Otherwise, stop bitching about it."

10. A summary of the arrogant tone of your posts to me, simply because I stated that I don't believe in morality
"My friend always would say: "have you tried to stop being a bitch". I think that is the solution to your problem."

11. So in your third post to me, yet again some more strawman
"First argument is self-defeating. If we needed law for survival, how
would we have ever evolved to the point where we would be able to form
civilized law based society?"

At no point have I stated that I am worried about the survival of the human species. My concern is with regards to my own life and that of my children.

12. Here you make an assumption
"If you start questioning things, it's going to come off as if you do think, deep down, that there is a right and wrong"

If I question things then it is because I want to survive. I am not appealing to any absolute rights or wrongs. I simply want to be part of a society where I have a better chance for survival. Is it wrong to commit murder? No, do I want a society that allows murder? No. Why not? Because I don't want to be murdered.

13. You state a false premise, presumably because you simply want amoralism to be wrong. This shows a poor understanding of amoralism, if only you would ask questions rather than make bold statements about amoralism.
"If you claim morality doesn't exists, than yes it is like arguing over
colors of the rainbow. You have no basis off which to argue that some
action should not be brought upon you; whether it's murder, torture,
assault, or anything else that harms you, what are you using to argue
against that? I know you are claiming that you want to protect yourself,
but protecting yourself only requires you protecting yourself, not
developing a construct of rights such as law."

Yes there is a question hidden in that tirade, but it is only rhetorical as you go on to answer it yourself. Building your strawman rather than understanding what amoralism actually is.

14. Again you make false assertions, that law requires belief in morality
"If morality doesn't exist, than someone murdering you isn't wrong. If
you're still worried about survival, you either have to kill them, or
get over it."

This is not the case, I can make very strong arguments with regards to wanting myself to survive and wanting a society that helps me to survive. If it helps me to survive, then it helps others to survive. I can convince people without invoking morality that we need laws against murder, if we individually want to survive.

15. Here it shows that you clearly aren't listening to me. You keep asserting that laws require morality, presumably because you can't understand how to come up with laws from an amoral stance.
"By saying that you want to live in a society that doesn't allow murder, you are making a claim about what is moral"

16. Some more evidence that you aren't listening to me
"Also given that you don't believe in morality, why do you have a problem
with the actions of others; if it's neither right nor wrong, it's just
an action, is it not?"

I want to survive, me (not the human race), me.

17. Here you make assertions and bring me into your world of morality belief
"you will respect everyone else right to that, as well as other things, as long as they don't infringe upon your rights."

I don't believe in morality and hence ethics or rights, these are all based on morality belief.

18. You develop your strawman even further
"Yet, at the same time you are talking about survival, you are saying
that you don't support, and don't believe in, morals. Even if morals
came from just wanting to survive, they are still morals."

Wanting to survive is not a morality. Would you consider it moral to want to survive and immoral to not want to survive?
Wanting rules to enhance my prospects of survival is not akin to wanting rules based on morality. There is no such thing as a universal right or wrong.

So, anyway, I am getting bored of picking out where you have been arrogant or building and destroying strawmen, your posts are riddled with this behaviour.

My position is simple
I lack a belief in morality thus ethics or rights.
I want to survive.
I am intelligent enough (as is most people) to understand that we desire rules to enhance our prospects for survival. e.g. no murder, rape or theft.
I am intelligent enough to know that if I behave in certain ways then other people will respond in certain ways and hence my behaviours could make my survival at risk. e.g. if I try to kill someone they will defend themselves and try to kill me, their friends and family will try to kill me, society may try to kill me. So I behave in a way that might appear moral to those whom believe in morality, but really I am behaving in my own best interests.

I am not trying to convince you that morality does not exist, you have clearly made up your mind on that. As per the OP, I m merely expressing my own viewpoint which I know is a minority viewpoint. You can either built up your strawman and gleefully destroy it or you can listen to my position and disagree if you want.
There is no value in me defending a strawman, as it is not my position. I try very hard to show you how my position differs from this strawman but I feel you don't listen.

Instead you are now insulting my intelligence
"Your intellectual capacity, or lack there of,
can't be put on me for taking time to explain concepts that you don't even seem
to understand or care about"

Quote: At no point did I state that morality was the cause of religion.

That's not what I was referring to.

Quote: This is flawed. You don't need morality as a basis for wanting rules.

Again that is not what I was referring to. I was referring to you having no basis to expect rights, because you don't believe in rights. I'm not saying you can't want certain things, you just can't say that there is anything wrong with it.

That's basically stating the obvious. If there is no moral right and wrong, it's not right and wrong. Thus, if someone doesn't believe in morality. They can't say an action is wrong.

You actually have to believe something is wrong to say it is wrong.

Quote: Again, at no point did I state that morality was the cause of religion neither have I stated that religion is morality.

Again, I was alluding to something completely different.

Quote:I know morality like I know math and language/description.

They come from the same type of knowledge, philosophically, in my view. They are all made up constructs for human understanding.

Quote:Without laws my survival is at issue. I am not top of the heap, I don't want to be murdered, I want a society to discourage murder.

I know, but like I stated, you don't think murder is wrong. We don't have to bow down to your preference. It's okay that you don't want to be murdered, but you admitted to not thinking it is wrong for people to kill you. I was just pointing that out.

A strawman is based on an argument. I wasn't arguing. None of those things you quoted were attempts by me to refute an argument I thought you were making.

Quote:At no point have I stated that I am worried about the survival of the human species. My concern is with regards to my own life and that of my children.

See the first two, that's nothing close to what I was talking about.

Quote:If I question things then it is because I want to survive. I am not appealing to any absolute rights or wrongs. I simply want to be part of a society where I have a better chance for survival. Is it wrong to commit murder? No, do I want a society that allows murder? No. Why not? Because I don't want to be murdered.

Yeah, but like I pointed out, I agree with that.

Quote:You state a false premise

Point out the false premise?

Quote:This is not the case, I can make very strong arguments with regards to wanting myself to survive and wanting a society that helps me to survive. If it helps me to survive, then it helps others to survive. I can convince people without invoking morality that we need laws against murder, if we individually want to survive.

Only if they prefer the same things as you. I'd call it morality, because you would be agreeing on things not to do and things to do that were mutually beneficial to everyone. You can call that not discussing right or wrong, but I call it discussing right and wrong.

If I did concede, however, I can still say, no you can't. I might have been mistaking before, but yes you can make laws off of personal preferences, I'd just call that morality, because of the thought that goes into deciding what is law.

Question alert?????

What if you were Black in a society of mostly White people who had guns and only had a preference to be concerned with only other Whites????

What if the White people thought it would be mutually beneficial to themselves if they owned you as property and made you do work for them why they murdered, beat, and raped your people, and made examples of those who opposed authority by brutally beating, hanging and setting fire to you people, among other things like hanging pregnant women upside down from trees and slicing their stomachs open and letting their fetus drop to the ground and then stomping it??

That's just a hypothetical situation. I need you to, based on that hypothetical, to argue, without morality (<that's the key without morality), that your survival, as a Black, should be in the interest of the Whites, and that they should not kill you by law???

All you have to do is convince them by your (here is your quote) "very strong argument(s) with regards to wanting myself to survive and wanting a society that helps me to survive?????

Basically, do what you claimed to be able to do: With my hypothetical situation, argue without morality, that they should come up with laws mutual beneficial to all, both Blacks and Whites, while keeping in mind that the Whites are very prosperous and happy.

That's the question I offer to you. Also an argument could be made for a hypothetical situation like this with moral philosophy and ethics.

I really don't want to argue anymore, so give an answer to my last question and I'll be happy.

Actually, I agreed with you, and repeatedly try to say I agreed with you and you just kept arguing, and said I was arguing against things I wasn't.

I believe in morality, you don't, so what?

The Paradox Of Fools And Wise Men:
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser men so full of doubts.” ― Bertrand Russell

I lack a belief in morality thus ethics or rights. I want to survive. I am intelligent enough (as is most people) to understand that we desire rules to enhance our prospects for survival. e.g. no murder, rape or theft. I am intelligent enough to know that if I behave in certain ways then other people will respond in certain ways and hence my behaviours could make my survival at risk. e.g. if I try to kill someone they will defend themselves and try to kill me, their friends and family will try to kill me, society may try to kill me. So I behave in a way that might appear moral to those whom believe in morality, but really I am behaving in my own best interests.

I am not trying to convince you that morality does not exist, you have clearly made up your mind on that. As per the OP, I m merely expressing my own viewpoint which I know is a minority viewpoint. You can either built up your strawman and gleefully destroy it or you can listen to my position and disagree if you want.

There is no value in me defending a strawman, as it is not my position. I try very hard to show you how my position differs from this strawman but I feel you don't listen.

I had to respond to that. Get that fucking bullshit out of here.

That strawman junk is straight shit. You couldn't come up with an argument to save your life if we based it off this thread and this discussion.

I never once forced you to accept anything I said. I just made arguments and explained things, why you sit back and talked shit, now your coming saying I was arguing strawman.

You never had a god-damned argument to begin with.

The Paradox Of Fools And Wise Men:
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser men so full of doubts.” ― Bertrand Russell

I wonder if morality is one of those terms like spirituality that seems to mean something, but doesn't let itself be pinned down cleanly enough to determine whether or not it is true. I was pondering this divide between ethics and morals. I guess I instinctively take the view that morality is something like the ethics of the group, but I'm pondering this.

Let's say that personal ethics are the set of behaviours an individual must display in order to be an appropriate fit to their function in society. I mentioned earlier examples of a judge being fair, and executioner carrying out orders to kill, etc. My instinct is to extend this and say that for any group there is a kind of group ethics that are the set of behaviours that the group as a whole must display in order to be an appropriate fit to their environment. For example, the "do not kill" thing is ethical within the group, but a "do kill" rule is occasionally ethical between different groups in order to try to ensure the survival of one group or the other. For a society that is built around monogamous trust relationships, sleeping around might be an objectively unethical behaviour. For a society that is based on free love, sleeping around might be an objectively ethical behaviour.

To me, most of morality can be explained by and in general replaced or superseded by this type of group ethics.

Where this raises questions for me are in areas like animal cruelty. We prefer to minimise suffering of animals, but this does not necessarily have an immediate ethical payoff. It seems that the ethical choice of minimising harms to others is leaking out of the group and being applied to other species - perhaps with no ethical benefit? Then again, this behaviour can be described as ethical if we consider the impacts of cruelty to animals back upon our society. We can for example correlate animal cruelty to higher rates of cruelty to humans in particular individuals, so although the anti-cruelty ethic is not necessarily justified directly it may be justified indirectly.

This is an area I have thought on somewhat but not read up on extensively. My present inclination is to discard the word "morality" as being insufficiently well-defined to be able to argue about whether it exists or not, and instead to focus on clearly definable terms such as ethics.

Give me your argument in the form of a published paper, and then we can start to talk.

A short sighted person/society might think that slavery is fine.
It suits the people belonging to that society. It obviously doesn't suit the slaves.
This is how people used to think in the past. There were concerned about the survival of themselves only and hence the society that they belonged to. Their society being made up of only one race of people, they had no incentive to care about the plight of other races. So they may have choosen to enslave them.

In doing this they run the risk of the nations of that race joining forces and going to war with you. But maybe you are a big strong society and can easily overpower them.

Problem is, when you enslave a person, you invariably bring them into your society, they become a member of your society. That person is a person after all. Original members of the society get to know the slaves, become friends and even lovers. Now you have original members supporting the slaves and wanting them not to be slaves. Overtime, you have wars and conflict due to this. So slavery certainly causes much risk and danger within a society.

We are noticing this effect with globalisation, that as more cultures, races, beliefs are integrated with societies then these societies are forced to change their rules in order to be more inclusive. Morality hasn't changed as absolute right and absolute wrong are absolute, they can't change. Merely the rules/laws of societies are developing in order to create a safe and stable society.